The Lottery House
by Wishes and Words and Etcetera
Summary: The Nationwide Money or House Lottery offered the chance for hopeful participants to fill out a ticket and possibly win a manor in Washington. Follow the once vampiric cast from Twilight in an all human, alternate universe adventure.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **This is the first chapter of an amazing and fabulous collab between I, the glorious Terra, and Maggie, the average one. Except she's the opposite of average. Above, not below. Anyways, we stayed up all night in my basement, and wrote eight chapters of this story. It took a lot of energy drinks, general twitchyness, and fears of zombies coming to eat our faces. This is posted on both of our profiles, and this one is written by Maggie. Enjoy! (And review!)

**Chapter One: Carlisle and Esme Win a House and a Future**

The Tuesday morning light poured through the small windows of the kitchen as Esme passed across the cold linoleum tiles that covered the floor. She pulled her housecoat tighter against her body as she crossed the path of another window, sending her body into shock as a painfully cold draft wafted in through the sieve like glass.

A stack of mail sat on the chipped, cheap counter, thick envelopes notorious for being bills outnumbered the thin envelopes that usually contained letters from family members and friends.

But there was one letter that dwarfed the rest, and with a curious twitch of her head, Esme brushed the bills and letters aside and picked it up. The paper the message was cradled in was thick and had a plastic feel. It was an obnoxious yellow.

Ripping it open, she pulled out the thick package that resided inside the ugly envelope.

"Carlisle?" Esme called, quickly scanning the papers to find things that made no sense. She hadn't entered any lottery. She hadn't selected the 'house' option on the ticket she had never filled out.

Arms slid around her waste, and her husband's head rested on her shoulder. "Mm, yes, my love?" Carlisle asked lazily, his breath tickling her skin. Esme held up the letter and its various papers, and she could feel him lean forward to inspect what is said.

_Congratulations! You've won your selected option in the nationwide lottery! You have either won; a) a two million dollar manor (furniture not included), or b) the money in cash (taxed accordingly)._

"Surprise," came Carlisle's breathless reply. Esme turned her head so she could see his dumbfounded expression in her peripheral vision.

"But…you never told me you were entering to win a house."

"Yes, that's where the surprise bit comes into play." He retorted, his eyes squinting so he could read the fine print of the letter.

"But, I mean…" she sputtered, unable to think as they stared at the paper.

They had won a house. A whole house. A two million dollar house.

Esme let the news sink in as she inspected her once beloved kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment, the room was small. The windows leaked, there wasn't enough room for even two of them, and everything was in somewhat shambles. It had been bought with the money Carlisle had managed to receive from his parents before they had more or less disowned him and her, not approving of their early marriage.

"I never thought we'd get it." Carlisle murmured, taking the papers from Esme and sitting down at the kitchen table, raking over them.

Esme joined him, their knees banging together like they always did when they tried to sit at the one-person table to eat a two-person meal.

"So, what happens now?" Esme asked, holding Carlisle's hand as it rested on the tacky tabletop.

"I guess we'll have to give the hospital and the school are two week notice and start packing." He said as if it were the easiest thing in the world.

"Leave? Where _is_ this house?" She pulled the papers towards herself and scanned the informational packet on the house in question. "_Washington? Forks Washington_? What the hell. I didn't think we'd be leaving!"

"You didn't know about it at all." Carlisle retorted, but he fidgeted with his wedding ring nervously. He hadn't taken it off in the six years he's had it and had developed the habit of spinning it around and around when he was nervous or anxious. It was endearing, really.

"But I can't leave my class. They'll miss me terribly, and where will they find someone this late in the school year who'll take over a grade two class? It's February! All the good substitutes are already taken."

Esme followed Carlisle's suit, playing with her engagement ring, clinking it against the wedding band that Carlisle had given her at their small, scathingly proclaimed 'shot-gun wedding'. It was small, but perfect in everyway that counted to Esme. Carlisle had given it to her, professing his love to her, and for that, the ring was a holy object to her.

"I'll have to re-take my internship." Carlisle muttered, running a hand through his lovely blond hair. "It'll take me an extra year to get my practice started."

He wanted to be a family doctor, and the fact that he chose that made Esme's heart melt.

"But it's a house. A nice house. A nice house to raise a family in." He said, looking at up at his wife. He needed to be able to take care of a family he and Esme would start. He didn't want to raise children in the shitty apartment he had bought with his parent's money six years ago.

"We haven't talked about having a family in a while." She said slowly, testing the waters. One of the reasons Esme had gotten married at seventeen was because she was pregnant with Carlisle's baby. After the wed and she miscarried, they had stayed together, loving each other through the heartbreak, but the idea of trying again was a topic never brought up.

"I want to have a family with you. In a nice house, where we can have a dog, and you can have a place to sew and draw, and I can have an office, and maybe when my practice starts up, you can go back to school and become an architect or an antique restorer. You know that's what you love." Carlisle said, enticing her with pretty words painting a pretty picture.

"But to get that," he continued, "we need to let go of our past and move on, and I think that house is just the push we need."

"I suppose it's not that far away." Esme conceded, and Carlisle's grin was brilliant like the sun.

"I'll call a moving service."

**A/N:** Emmett is next! Written by yours truely :)


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I posted late. Whoops. But that's okay, because Maggie posted on time! Yay for her! Actually, we're both TWO WEEKS late. And ceverything was already written. Clearly, it is the posting, not the writing, that we need to work on. This is my writing, you can tell our differences. Maggie's more of a romantic, I am one secretly, but my writing isn't quite as cute and magical.**

**Chapter Two: Emmett wins a house and a new status.**

The phone rang into the empty two room apartment, buzzing angrily into the silence. A key entered the lock, and the door swung open, a burly young man stumbling in, with a brown paper bag of groceries in one hand. He threw the bag onto the counter in the corner of the dark room, flicking the light switch, illuminating a navy and stainless steel room, with a double bed in the corner, sheets rumpled. The bag spilled its contacts onto the counter, raw bloody steaks sliding and bouncing freely against the counter.

Emmett took a calming breath, before picking up the phone. "Hello?" He asked with a voice as smooth as velvet laid over gravel, henceforth to be called his sexy voice. On the other side of the phone line, a woman grew flustered, having to fan herself with her hand before continuing.

"Hello, Emmett McCarty?" She fluttered. "We sent you a letter, but you never seemed to respond, and we have limited time left."

Emmett's forehead wrinkled in confusion, leaning against the wall, the cord tangling around his thick torso. He never checked his mail, it was a PO box downtown, too far away to bother with more than once every month to get bills. But why would she send him a letter?

"Who are you again?" Emmett asked, "Christine?"

The woman was caught off guard again, patting down her hair as she answered breathily, "No, my name-"

Emmett cut her off. "Nicole?"

She shook her head, before realizing he couldn't see her. "No, it's-"

"Kate?" He asked again.

"It's Maggie, actually" She said, speaking quickly to get through.

"Maggie... Maggie." He mused. "Tall, brunette, we met over at the bar on 712 st?"

"Um, no , I have red hair, actually."

"Oh." Emmett was stumped. "You sure you never took jello shots off the bartender's body?"

"Nope." The silence was loud.

"Must have been a different Maggie."

"Anyways," She chirped nervously, this being the first time assigned to actually talk to one of the recipients, "I am here from the nationwide house or money lottery, to tell you that you have won!" Her voice rose cheerfully. "You have selected the house option, as opposed to the two million dollars in money. The house is a large manor in Forks, Washington, and directions and instructions will be in the mail. The house given to you from NHML will be unfurnished, so be sure to bring your own furniture."

Emmett's mind was reeling. "Wait." He said. "Two million dollars? Why didn't I pick that instead?"

Maggie blushed, and her voice stuttered when she said, "The money is taxable, and on your ticket you voiced your displeasure."

"My displeasure?" Emmett asked.

"Well, you said "Fuck taxes." under the money option."

"Oh." Emmett said. "So. I won a house?"

"So it seems, Mr McCarty." Maggie said politely.

"Bitchin'" Emmett said, dragging the word out.

"Yes. So all the information you need is in the mail, I hope you look forward to your new house." And with that, to avoid more verbal abuse, Maggie hung up.

Emmett looked around his tiny apartment, before what he had considered a groovy bachelors pad, but it now seemed to him like a dirty old hovel, which of course it had been all along.

He had always wanted a house, a real place to call his own. A place where he could rule, where he was the one in charge. An apartment gave him none of that, but this dream of a new house was perfect. A manor is just icing on the metaphorical cake.

In celebration, Emmett spent the next few hours packing up everything he owned, and watching his secret favorite movie, Richie Rich, and desperately hoping that he would also have his own personal McDonalds in the mansion of his dreams.

**A/N: Gosh, I'm weird. Anyways, Maggie said Alice next, and I hope so, because that is the beginning of the weirdness. So exciting!**


	3. Chapter 3

_**Authors Note: **_**So, Mags the brillianti wrote this lovely insight into the first of the incredibly random variations of the characters we have decided upon. I swear, I cannot wait for when you guys see the chaos that erupts when they all meet in the eighth, and last of the pre-written chapters. I'm not sure what will happen when we don't have them prewritten anymore. Have another all-nighter? Postpone and postpone, until all of out alerts have been cancelled? I hope for the former. Maybe, once our lives get a bit of a schedule back into them, we'll be better at posting, I know there is no way we could possibly get worse...**

_**Chapter Three: Alice Wins a House and a Family**_

It was her second week in Indiana when she got the call. She was in some hole-in-the-wall restaurant that she had decided to work in, and she was passing burnt-cheese nachos to the obese man having a lunch for one when her manager called her to the back room.

"It's for you." He said, holding out the office's phone. "She's saying you put this as your home phone number." The overly hairy man said as thought it was a crime to tell someone she lived in the place she worked. Little did she know that she slept in one of the booths when the restaurant closed, having made a copy of the master key during her break on her first day of work. She had a whole key ring of them, one for every job she ever worked.

She grabbed the phone from Jim. "Hello?"

"Mary Brandon?" The woman on the other line asked.

"It's Alice, and yes?"

"This is the Nationwide House or Money Lottery. I'm extremely glad to say-"

"What's your name?" Alice asked, twirling the cord around her pointer finger as she spoke.

The question seemed to have flustered the woman on the other line. "My name? Why do you want to know that?"

"I'm just curious." Alice said, shrugging her shoulders. She didn't think it was that big of a deal. People asked about her name all of the time.

"It's Maggie." The woman said awkwardly.

"Hello, Maggie. So, you were saying?"

"Oh, um…yes." Maggie scrambled to remember where she left off. "Oh! Yes. I'm extremely glad to say that you've won! You selected the house option, which, as I hope you know, does not come furnished."

"Oh, wow! That's exciting. I'll be sharing the house with others, right?"

"How'd you know?"

"Well, it seems like an awfully large house to have someone live in alone." Alice said, watching her finger turn purple from the cord cutting off her circulation.

"Right. Well, more information on the house will be arriving in the mail, but…it seems you haven't put in an address for us to send that to."

Of course she hadn't. She didn't have a home address. "Can you just give me the information now? I can write it down." Alice said, releasing her finger finally and grabbing a piece of paper off Jim's desk and a pen. Both were emblazoned with the restaurants logo, and both items were things Jim didn't like his employees using.

Too bad for him.

Alice scribbled the information Maggie gave her in her own, special shorthand. She had created it during her first months of living place to place, finding it easier to write in a journal when she knew random people couldn't read it if she left it in one of her various sleeping places.

"I thank you kindly, Maggie. May Karma bring you pleasant things." Alice said in parting. Maggie gurgled slightly, and Alice hung up the phone with a gentle click.

When he couldn't hear anymore talking, Jim barged back into the office, his eyes bulging slightly when he saw his company paper written on and clutched in Alice's hand.

"Guess what, Jim!" Alice exclaimed, hopping off her perch on his desk and straightening out her company-logo'd shirt.

"What?" He growled, his eyes not leaving his defiled paper.

"I won a house _and_ a family!" She exclaimed, running up to huge his hairy self. Momentarily stunned, he patted her back in a way he thought employers should do so to employees and she pulled away, beaming.

"How'd you win a family?" He asked in his deer-in-headlights confusion.

"Well, that wasn't on the lottery fill-out sheet thing, but I won a house in Washington, which will be shared amongst the winners. There was more then one, you know." She said matter-of-factly.

"So you'll be quitting, I'm assuming. It's quite a drive to Washington."

"I have to go get bus tickets! And I'll need to bring some furniture, but I don't have any furniture… _eBay!_ I'll go on eBay and send it to the house. Fantastic." Alice's mind was going a mile a minute, laying everything out in front of her as she planned her uprooting again. But this time, she had a planned destination, and this time, she hoped to stay there.

"Thanks for letting me work here, Jim. Sorry I can't give you my two weeks notice, but I'm quitting. The large man at booth 3 needs another Coke, but make sure it isn't diet, and Suzie who works at the gas station down the street is looking for another job, so try to hire her as my replacement. Thanks again, and may Karma bring you pleasant things!"

And with that, Alice was gone, grabbing her few belongings that she kept at the restaurant and dashing to the local library, where wifi was free. She needed a greyhound bus ticket, one way, and she needed to buy some furniture… a couch, a bed and mattress and a dresser should suffice.

And with purposeful strides Alice walked as fast as she could on her short legs towards a new future and leaving her vagrant lifestyle behind her permanently.

_**A/N:**_ Isn't Alice adorable? Maggie is always so wonderful when making the characters uniquely her own. If you guys have the chance, I strongly recommend going to her page and reading a bit of the wonders she has on there, probably something for everyone in the Twilight universe, unless what you are looking for is terrible writing and bad grammar, because that is (pretty much) never seen in her stories. Just the spelling mistakes, which I find endearing :D. Enough rambling. We've got Rosie, Jasper, Edward and Bella left. Either Rosalie or Jasper next, but both are pretty crazy :).

-Terra


	4. Chapter 4

AN: Yeah, this was written ages ago, supposed to be posted ages ago, and well, life is odd. I wrote it! Hurrah for me! Next one should be Bella or Edward, I think :)

Chapter Six: Rosalie wins a house and a life without fear.

There were seven different ways a grown man could enter Rosalie's condo, either through doors, windows, or using sledgehammers. She had every door locked with four locks, each window had bars on the inside, and she had a guard for night time, so she could sleep, although she only slept due to massive amounts of sleeping pills.

During the day she kept a watch on, and patrolled the interior of her condo every hour. Her heart would race, and although it made her feel a bit unsafe, because she could be snuck up on, she played old rock and roll to keep her blood pressure stable. The soft accent of Bob Marley or the beat to The Beatles made her feel protected, although never had _he_ come back to find her.

Rosalie was draped in her satin, thigh length dressing gown, her long blond hair done in thick ringlets from sleeping in curlers, her dark circles gone from a morning lying in the dark with aloe vera smeared under her eyes, and cucumbers on top. She sat on her red velvet couch, in front of her television, and she contemplated her reflection in a silver edged handheld mirror.

Others may think that Rosalie was admiring her beauty, and that would be exactly what she would want them to think. But to herself, she was making every clogged pore, her too full lips, her transparent eyelashes into the worst faults imaginable, until her face no longer signified beauty to any part of her brain.

She looked down at her watch to see that it was four o' clock on the dot. She stood up, flipping on the music before giving herself time to panic.

_Every little thing will be all right._ Bob Marley crooned, as Rosalie took a deep breath before going into the foyer. She made sure the door was locked, on each of the locks, and looked outside, through the peephole.

Her heart stopped.

A man, dressed in a completely blue outfit, which is such a fashion no-no, was walking up her steps. He had a few letters in his hand and a giant yellow plastic envelope with black lettering.

He knocked on the door. Rosalie's heart started again, going too fast to feel normal. "What do you want?" She asked through the door shrilly.

The man in blue held up the letters. "I've got your mail." He called in, leaning towards the door.

She backed up. "Push it through the mail slot." She called out.

He held up the yellow envelope, although Rosalie couldn't see. "It's too big! Just open the door."

She contemplated running to the bathroom and calling the police.

Instead, fueled by the rock and roll songs playing in the background, she opened the door and poked her head out.

The mail carrier's jaw dropped. She pulled the door open further, wrapping her robe around her body self consciously. Maybe he would see the fat that gathered on the back of her ribs. Maybe he could see how distorted her face was, how imperfect she really was.

She held out her hand. "Mail?" She asked. He stood there, dumb struck for a moment, before handing it to her, his eyes penetrating any façade of beauty she might have put on, every second making her feel worse about herself.

Her eyes filled with tears. "Thank you," She said.

"Wait, are you okay?" He asked, but she closed the door in his face, locking each one of the locks and checking them twice.

She leaned against the door, and slid to the ground. It had taken so much effort into just opening the door. She looked around at what she had created for herself, a cage, to keep evil out, but in turn, kept her in.

She ripped open the yellow envelope that had cause so much misfortune. Inside were the words _Congratulations! You've won your selected option in the nationwide lottery! You have either won; a) a two million dollar manor (furniture not included), or b) the money in cash (taxed accordingly)._

She remembered buying the ticket online, gambling with her father's money. She had won. She had won the house that she had been dreaming about for decades.

She flipped open to a glossy picture book, her house on the cover. It had a wide green lawn and open windows, with greenery and flowers everywhere. It was beautiful. It was so unlike the prison she lived in now.

She was sick of living life afraid. If she moved away, she could start again, start fresh, and live life the way she was meant to.


End file.
